RTX 5080 vs RTX A6000: Specs, VRAM & Price
Short answer: choose the RTX A6000 when 48 GB of VRAM is the gating requirement. Choose the RTX 5080 when 16 GB is enough for the workload and the lower hourly rate points that way.
The RTX 5080 has 16 GB of VRAM; the RTX A6000 has 48 GB.
You can rent both by the hour, no purchase required. RTX 5080 from $0.309/GPU/hr; RTX A6000 from $0.550/GPU/hr. The RTX 5080 is 44% cheaper at the entry rate.
RTX 5080
Good for inference and light fine-tuning workloads
RTX A6000
Good for training and inference on models that don't need FP8 kernels
Last updated: 2026-11-03 UTCRefreshes every 6 hours
Specs side by side
| Spec | RTX 5080 | RTX A6000 |
|---|---|---|
| VRAM | 16 GB | 48 GB |
| Memory bandwidth | 960 GB/s | 768 GB/s |
| Architecture | Blackwell | Ampere |
| Compute capability | 12.0 | 8.6 |
| Precisions in hardware | FP32, FP16, BF16, FP8, INT4 | FP32, FP16, BF16, INT4 |
| Peak FP16/BF16 tensor TFLOPS | 225.1 TFLOPS | – |
| Peak FP8 tensor TFLOPS | 450.2 TFLOPS | – |
| NVLink / multi-GPU interconnect | – | NVLink, 2-way |
| Max board power (TDP) | 360W | 300W |
| Regions | 1 | 2 |
On-demand price
| Rate | RTX 5080 | RTX A6000 |
|---|---|---|
| Lowest per GPU/hr | $0.309/GPU/hr (cheapest overall) | $0.550/GPU/hr |
Which is better for AI: RTX 5080 or RTX A6000?
Choose the RTX A6000 when 48 GB of VRAM is the gating requirement. Choose the RTX 5080 when 16 GB is enough for the workload and the lower hourly rate points that way.
RTX 5080 vs RTX A6000: common questions
Is the RTX 5080 or the RTX A6000 better for AI?
Short answer: choose the RTX A6000 when 48 GB of VRAM is the gating requirement. Choose the RTX 5080 when 16 GB is enough for the workload and the lower hourly rate points that way.
Is the RTX 5080 or the RTX A6000 cheaper to rent?
On Aquanode's live marketplace the RTX 5080 starts at $0.309/GPU/hr (median $0.589/GPU/hr) and the RTX A6000 starts at $0.550/GPU/hr (median $0.616/GPU/hr). The RTX 5080 is the cheaper of the two at the entry rate, by 44%.
What is the difference between the RTX 5080 and the RTX A6000?
The RTX 5080 has 16 GB of VRAM against the RTX A6000's 48 GB; the RTX 5080 is a Blackwell part and the RTX A6000 is Ampere (compute capability 12.0 vs 8.6); only the RTX 5080 supports FP8 compute. On price, the RTX 5080 lists from $0.309/GPU/hr and the RTX A6000 from $0.550/GPU/hr.
How widely available are the RTX 5080 and the RTX A6000?
The RTX 5080 is listed in 1 region and the RTX A6000 in 2 regions right now.
How much does 1,000 GPU-hours cost on the RTX 5080 vs the RTX A6000?
At the lowest rates listed today, 1,000 GPU-hours costs $309 on the RTX 5080 and $550 on the RTX A6000, a difference of $241 for the same runtime. Rates are per GPU per hour and update hourly.
How much VRAM does the RTX 5080 have compared to the RTX A6000?
The RTX 5080 has 16 GB of VRAM; the RTX A6000 has 48 GB.
Does the RTX 5080 or the RTX A6000 support NVLink?
The RTX A6000 supports NVLink, 2-way; the RTX 5080 has no dedicated GPU-to-GPU interconnect.
How this comparison is calculated
Every price is normalized to a per-GPU hourly rate using the same pipeline as every other pricing surface on Aquanode, and only the cheapest qualifying offer per provider is shown. A dash means that provider does not currently list that GPU.
Architecture, compute capability and supported precisions come from each vendor's published datasheet for that generation, not from the marketplace feed. This page regenerates at most once per hour.
Memory bandwidth, tensor TFLOPS, NVLink/interconnect and max board power are the same verified-from-datasheet figures shown on each model's own RTX 5080 page and RTX A6000 page, which link the primary vendor source for that model. A dash here means Aquanode hasn't verified that figure from a primary source yet, never a guess.
Go further
Check what fits in each card's memory with the RTX 5080 VRAM calculator and the RTX A6000 VRAM calculator, or browse every model by generation in the GPU index.
More RTX 5080 comparisons
More RTX A6000 comparisons
Related reading: RTX 5080 pricing and specs, and RTX 5080 vs RTX 5090.
